Japan Will Begin Testing Self-Driving Taxis Next Year

Japan will begin testing autonomous taxis with passengers on city roads in 2016, the government and Robot Taxi Inc. announced on Thursday.

The trial robot taxi service will first be offered to fifty residents in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture to run errands like grocery shopping, The Wall Street Journal reports. Running no more than 3 km (roughly 2 miles), the trips will run along major city roads and will be accompanied by crew incase something goes awry.

Exit Theatre Mode

The robot taxis are retrofitted Toyota Estima hybrid minivans from Robot Taxi, a venture between Sony-owned ZMP and DeNA Co, the same company that is helping develop Nintendo IP-based smartphone games. Japan hopes to commercialize the driverless taxi service by the 2020 Olympics.

Many other companies are developing self-driving vehicles. For instance, Google Inc. began testing driverless cars in July and General Motors announced today that employees will have access to autonomous vehicles to use around its campus in Michigan late next year.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said this week that Tesla vehicles will be fully automated within another three years, although regulations won’t be in pace in most regions for the technology to be used on public roads.

Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter.